RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Since the earliest days of Americans’ engagement with the Middle East, U.S. officials have looked to Americans associated with the region’s universities to advance U.S. interests,” writes commentator and political veteran Pratik Chougule. His recent, intriguing book, American Universities in the Middle Fast and U.S. Foreign Policy: Intersections with American Interests, details how such policies “have yielded mixed results” amidst the greater Middle East’s conflicted politics.

As Chougule discussed in a recent interview, his case studies of American universities established in the Middle East begin with nineteenth-century Christian missionaries. They saw American academic excellence as a means of introducing Muslim societies to the Bible. Such evangelicals founded in 1866 the Syrian Protestant College, forerunner to the American University of Beirut (AUB), and in 1919 the American University of Cairo (AUC).

Until World War II, the private universities AUB and AUC remained isolated American presences in the Middle East, but American government aloofness from the region changed dramatically during the Cold War. At AUB, the “U.S. government came to view the university as a strategic asset,” particularly as, among other reasons, AUB “administrators had developed close ties to regional governments with oil reserves,” Chougule observes. Meanwhile, since AUC’s founding president Charles Watson, “six of AUC’s eleven presidents previously served in the U.S. government in diplomatic and military roles.” By 1978, AUC was the “only America higher education institution to receive more than half of its funds” from the United States government, Chougule notes.

Growing American interest in the Middle East came with a price, particularly given American support for the state of Israel, a deeply unpopular move at AUB, AUC, and in the wider region. “Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, AUB administrators expended political capital to lobby Washington against the Zionist movement,” Chougule writes. Similarly, AUC faculty members have endorsed university resolutions denouncing Egypt’s 1979 peace agreement with Israel, both in 1979 and 2008.

“Regional leaders had to pay a greater political price to welcome an American higher education presence in their countries” after American recognition of Israel in 1948, Chougule notes. Conflict with Israel often made campus peace impossible. “By the 1970s, protests related to the Arab-Israeli conflict overwhelmed AUB,” he observes.

Even more volatile, AUB exemplified how “American-style universities create soft targets for terrorist groups to exploit,” notes Chougule. On July 19, 1982, Hezbollah kidnapped AUB president David Dodge on campus and had him flown to Iran, the beginning of a year-long hostage ordeal. Subsequently, Hezbollah “proceeded to gun down, kidnap, and assassinate a string of Americans at AUB,” Chougule recounts.

Perhaps more shockingly, Hezbollah members do not just attack AUB, but also study there. “Hezbollah sees AUB as a training ground to help its operatives understand the United States,” Chougule notes. “Those who enroll at AUB are identified as promising leaders of Hezbollah, which gives them access to Iranian and Hezbollah-financed scholarships.”

Hezbollah’s AUB alumni undermine a key argument for American government support of Middle East academia. “Particularly since the September 11 attacks, influential members of the U.S. policymaking community have suggested that American-style higher education in the Middle East can help undermine the appeal of violent extremism,” Chougule writes. Yet “even a charitable assessment of the universities on this front is countered by the ways terrorist movements have exploited the universities to their advantage,” he notes. For example, in 2017, AUB agreed to settle with federal prosecutors a $700,000 civil lawsuit concerning material support to Hezbollah.

American government officials have also in the past received Arabic language and cultural training at AUB and AUC, but many question this education’s content. “Education at institutions such as AUB and AUC, in certain circles in Washington, serves as a stigma,” Chougule observes. “Arabist diplomats have long been criticized for developing contrarian views on the Middle East and using their power to undermine the authority of their higher-ups,” he notes. These civil servants are suspect of advocating “on behalf of pro-Arab, anti-Israel, and undemocratic causes.”

At least AUB and AUC can still operate, something not possible for the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), given concrete security realities. The American government founded AUAF as part of its post-9/11 nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, this would-be liberal arts institution met its demise when Taliban jihadists took over Afghanistan again following America’s 2021 withdrawal.

Both during and after President George W. Bush’s administration, First Lady Laura Bush had high hopes for AUAF, particularly concerning women’s rights. She “became one of the institution’s most ardent supporters, emphasizing the university more than perhaps any other initiative in her Afghan women’s agenda,” Chougule writes, advocacy that continued under President Barack Obama. “Secretaries of State Clinton and Kerry, national security advisor Susan Rice, and First Lady Michelle Obama all affirmed the university’s importance, largely on the grounds that it was benefiting Afghan women.”

Far more stable is Qatar’s Education City, begun in 1996, where elite American universities such as Georgetown and Northwestern have established branch campuses, aided by this Gulf State’s petrodollar largesse. Yet Qatari policymakers in the Qatari capital of Doha have more than education in mind. An “appeal for Doha of recruiting predominantly American universities was that it furthered Qatar’s interest in nurturing strategic ties with the United States,” Chougule notes.

“Education City had, over the years, provided Qatari officials with a platform to invite prominent U.S. officials to Qatar and engage them on the country’s interests,” Chougele writes. “Notable among them was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who steered the Trump administration away from a confrontational approach toward Qatar,” Chougule highlights. During a 2011 Qatar visit as Exxon Chairman and CEO, “Tillerson had praised Education City for contributing to an inclusive social fabric in the country.”

Additionally, “Qatar has built goodwill through its status as the single largest country donor to American higher education,” Chougule notes. This aid has concerned many given Qatar’s support of Muslim Brotherhood ideologies. In Qatar itself exist “suspicions that funding from American institutions is being funneled toward actors with ties to extremist groups,” he adds.

“Policymaking communities around the world are looking to American-style universities as potential instruments of soft power and knowledge diplomacy,” Chougule writes, but Qatar exemplifies an uneven record. On the upside, in the Middle East “host governments tend to permit greater freedom of expression on American campuses than other comparable forums,” he notes. By contrast, the “State Department’s 2020 report on international religious freedom specifically cites examples of how Islamist pressure curbs the freedom of American branch campuses” in Qatar.

“Among the most longstanding and enduring goals that have animated Washington’s support for American-style higher education in the Middle East is” educating “leaders with sensibilities in line with American values,” Chougule notes. Yet Middle Eastern college graduates are not necessarily enlightened according to Western standards. The “2010 Qatar World Values Survey found that college-educated Qataris are more likely to participate in societal life, but that their civic participation is correlated with reduced support for democracy,” Chougule assesses.

“American universities in the Middle East have succeeded in producing a disproportionate share of political leaders in the region,” Chougule concludes, but with no unitary outlook. “Even by the modest standard of encouraging constructive dialogue, the leaders that have emerged from American-style universities have been a mixed bag for U.S. foreign policy interests,” he writes. Although the “most influential foreign policy leaders of the region who are relatively aligned with the United States” have American-linked alma maters, “these universities have also produced their share of anti-American alumni.”

Chougule himself has “come to question whether U.S. policymakers are giving sufficient consideration to non-military means of securing American interests in the Middle East,” but his own refined research reveals no panacea. America’s military engagements in the Middle East have often involved conflicts with ideas and interests anchored in the doctrines of the region’s majority-Muslim faith, concerning a range of issues, from women’s rights to Israel. As Chougule’s valuable book shows, winning Muslim hearts and minds in the classroom can be just as elusive as winning on the battlefield.